Alcohol representations are socially situated: an investigation of beverage representations by using a property generation task

Previous research suggests that people's representations of alcoholic beverages play an important role in drinking behavior. However, relatively little is known about the contents of these representations. Here, we introduce the property generation task as a tool to explore these representations in detail. In a laboratory study (N = 110), and a bar field-study (N = 56), participants listed typical properties of alcoholic beverages, sugary beverages, and water. Each of these properties was then categorized using a previously developed, hierarchical coding scheme. For example, the property “sweet” was categorized as referring to “taste”, which falls under “sensory experience”, which falls under “consumption situation”. Afterwards, participants completed measures of drinking behavior and alcohol craving. Results showed that alcoholic beverages were strongly represented in terms of consumption situations, with 57% and 69% of properties relating to consumption in the laboratory and the bar study, respectively. Specifically, alcoholic beverages were more strongly represented in terms of the social context of consumption (e.g., “with friends”) than the other beverages. In addition, alcoholic beverages were strongly represented in terms of sensory experiences (e.g. “sweet”) and positive outcomes (e.g. “creates fun”), as were the sugary beverages and water. In Study 1, the extent to which alcoholic beverages were represented in terms of social context was positively associated with craving and regularly consuming alcohol. The property generation task provides a useful tool to access people's idiosyncratic representations of alcoholic beverages. This may further our understanding of drinking behavior, and help to tailor research and interventions to reduce drinking of alcoholic and other high-calorie beverages

Positive affect and behavior change

Affect and emotion have potent motivational properties that can be leveraged to promote desirable behavior change. Although interventions often employ fear appeals in an effort to motivate change, both theory and a growing body of empirical evidence suggest that positive affect and emotions can promote change by serving as proximal rewards for desired behaviors. This article reviews examples of such efforts in the domains of healthy diet and exercise, prosocial behavior, and pro-environmental behavior, documenting the strong potential offered by behavioral interventions using this approach. The extent to which positive affect experience prospectively drives behavior change (as distinct from rewarding the desired behavior) is less clear. However, a variety of possible indirect pathways involving incidental effects of positive affect and specific positive emotions deserve rigorous future study

Tempting food words activate eating simulations

This study shows that tempting food words activate simulations of eating the food, including simulations of the taste and texture of the food, simulations of eating situations, and simulations of hedonic enjoyment. In a feature listing task, participants generated features that are typically true of four tempting foods (e.g., chips) and four neutral foods (e.g., rice). The resulting features were coded as features of eating simulations if they referred to the taste, texture, and temperature of the food (e.g., “crunchy”; “sticky”), to situations of eating the food (e.g., “movie”; “good for Wok dishes”), and to the hedonic experience when eating the food (e.g., “tasty”). Based on the grounded cognition perspective, it was predicted that tempting foods are more likely to be represented in terms of actually eating them, so that participants would list more features referring to eating simulations for tempting than for neutral foods. Confirming this hypothesis, results showed that eating simulation features constituted 53% of the features for tempting food, and 26% of the features for neutral food. Visual features, in contrast, were mentioned more often for neutral foods (45%) than for tempting foods (19%). Exploratory analyses revealed that the proportion of eating simulation features for tempting foods was positively correlated with perceived attractiveness of the foods, and negatively with participants’ dieting concerns, suggesting that eating simulations may depend on individuals’ goals with regard to eating. These findings are discussed with regard to their implications for understanding the processes guiding eating behavior, and for interventions designed to reduce the consumption of attractive, unhealthy food

The allure of forbidden food: a goal conflict perspective on dieting

Body weight is an issue of growing concern in Western societies, and dieting is an increasingly popular means of weight loss and weight control. However, most dieters are not able to maintain their weight loss in the long term, and people with a chronic dieting goal (i.e., restrained eaters) tend to respond with food cravings and overeating when confronted with attractive food cues. The present dissertation introduces a novel approach to such failures of self-regulation by proposing that restrained eaters’ problem might lie in their sensitivity to the hedonic aspects of food and the resulting inhibition of their dieting goal. A goal conflict model is presented that integrates recent findings on hedonic sensitivity in eating regulation with social-psychological research on nonconscious goal pursuit. Restrained eaters are suggested to hold two conflicting goals with regard to eating: the goal of enjoying good food, and the goal of weight control. The perception of attractive food cues in the environment triggers hedonic thoughts about the pleasures of food, which in turn leads to the inhibition of the mental representation of the conflicting dieting goal. Subsequent cognition and behavior will then be dominated by a hedonic orientation towards food, rather than by the dieting goal. The present dissertation presents empirical studies showing that restrained eaters, but not unrestrained eaters, spontaneously activate hedonic thoughts about food when they are confronted with attractive food cues. Once triggered, this hedonic orientation towards food influences restrained eaters’ cognitive processes by directing their visual attention towards preferred food items. However, it was also found that this attentional bias for attractive food does not occur when restrained eaters are subtly reminded of their dieting goal. This provides further evidence for the conflicting relationship between a hedonic orientation towards food and the dieting goal. While restrained eaters have in general been found to be rather unsuccessful dieters, the present dissertation also presents empirical findings suggesting that successful restrained eaters exist, too. Whereas unsuccessful restrained eaters inhibit the mental representation of the dieting goal upon the perception of an attractive food cue, successful restrained eaters activate their dieting goal in response to food cues. This differential response to tempting food is also reflected in restrained eaters’ behavior. Whereas for unsuccessful restrained eaters, there is no association between dieting intentions and actual dieting behavior, successful restrained eaters were found to translate their intentions into behavior much more consistently. This might be due to the fact that only for successful restrained eaters, the dieting goal is cognitively accessible in tempting situations to guide their behavior with regard to attractive food. By examining restrained eaters’ failure of self-regulation from a social-cognitive perspective, the present work provides new insights into the processes that translate the perception of environmental food cues into eating and dieting behavior. The goal conflict model examined here can accommodate earlier research findings in the area of eating behavior, but it is also relevant for understanding attempts at resisting temptations more generally

Nonconscious self-regulation or the automatic pilot of human behavior

No abstract available